Neo Tactical Evangelion
by Heir of the void
Summary: Evanglions, now at a more resonable size! (Insert disclamer here, etc.)
1. Chapter 1

"We're sorry; your call could not be completed as dialed. Please-" I smashed the payphone back into back into its cradle, sighing. _Why do we even _have_ these things anymore?_

I looked around. The streets of New Phoenix seemed strangely deserted. Despite bearing little resemblance to its predecessor, I was still a city that was said never to sleep. I stepped down off the curb, continuing to look around. A newspaper blew slowly down the street in front of me. The city seemed to have been evacuated in a hurry. One of the vehicles parked near the payphone had its dash fully lit up, and, peering closer, I saw keys still in the ignition.

I pondered this for a moment. Abruptly, a low, booming roar shattered the quiet.

Several more followed it, one after another, like a thunderstorm on fully automatic. I stood still, stunned. All of the blasts were coming from the north. From the other direction, a low roaring sound built quickly, reaching a crescendo as a formation of seven UN heavy combat VTOLs rushed overhead.

"Well, what the hell." I muttered, looked around. I noticed... something. Something off. A slight shimmer in the air. I'd read enough sci-fi to know what _that_ meant.

I moved to put some a car between myself and the shimmer, then reached into a planter, and, trying _really, really hard_ not to think about what was in there, grabbed a handful of gravel and threw it at the shimmer.

As the shower of pebbles neared it, a small plane apparently composed of concentric geometric figures appeared in the path of each rock, deflecting it more than a foot from the shimmer.

As I stumbled back, the shimmer began to resolve itself, becoming clear, until a thing stood before me.

"My God..."

It was a hulking, vaguely humanoid thing. It stood tall, maybe twice my height, on grossly over-muscular legs. Its arms were similarly large, attached to an improbably small torso. It had no head, and a mask made of a white, bony material was affixed to its chest, over where a human's sternum would be. A large red orb glowed on its chest, held by a filigree of _something_, not unlike a set gemstone.

Naturally, I was terrified. I started stumbling back as the thing took first one oversized step, then another. The wind rushing off of it was ruffling my hair and clothes, and making it hard to stand. A shadow fell over me. I groaned _of all the luck_.

I looked up again. The thing casting the shadow was a large, delta-shaped aircraft, and the wind was the jet stream from the four engines it had turned down to allow it to hover.

Two black objects detached themselves from its underside. _Missiles_ I thought, elated. Their engine ignited, and they struck the hulking thing almost instantaneously. They exploded, and I felt as well as heard the deafening shockwave roll over me. They threw up a cloud of dust, preventing me from seeing what the effect of the strikes were, but the aircraft opened up with a pair of gatling guns, though I felt like I didn't hear the of gunshots nearly as much as I should have.

The aircraft maintained the fire for a few seconds, then, before the last of the shell casings hit the pavement; four grey spheres flew from the vehicle and plunged into the dust cloud.

"GET TO DA CHOPPA." I looked up at the source of the voice, and saw a rope ladder dropping from a hatch. It hit the ground next to me.

The dust cloud cleared, and the thing began to walk forward. I grabbed the rope ladder and hung. I looked up, and saw the engines on the aircraft begin to rotate upwards. I felt a lurch, and the ladder began to withdraw into the belly of the aircraft. At the same time, the tilt jet began to gain both altitude and velocity.

At that moment, I made one of the classic blunders. I looked down. The city was plummeting away below me as I ascended. I felt a bit faint. For an instant, I felt my hands loosen their grip on the cold metal rung of the ladder I held on to. My terror at that shook me out of my deer-in-headlights moment, and I snapped my head back up to look at the black metal underbelly of the tilt jet.

They seemed to be winching me in, but slowly. I screwed my eyes shut as the wind caused by the speed of the aircraft became almost painful. I considered climbing up the ladder. _It would be pretty hard_ I thought _if for no other reason than the wind._ The speed of the aircraft was causing the ladder to trail back at an angle, probably a shallow enough one that I could have walked up it, had it been more rigid. _And if I was insane_.

The decision was made for me. I heard a sound, it was hard to describe, and turned my head back and opened one eye. I was able to make out _something_, vaguely bird-shaped, but much larger, coming up from almost directly behind my aircraft. As I watched, it fired a reddish beam which sizzled through the air to the left of my head. I started to climb the ladder.

Speaking of which, climbing a rope ladder hanging from a flying jet while something shoots lasers at you is _really hard_. I made it about halfway up, and then one of the lasers hit the tilt jet. The craft shuddered, and the rope ladder flailed violently. I nearly lost my grip. Luckily, I was able to grab back on. Unfortunately, the tilt jet was probably about to begin performing evasive maneuvers.

I started climbing again. The retraction of the ladder had brought me up a surprising amount, and I was only a few feet now from the hatch. One of the lasers the thing behind the plane hit the ladder, a few rungs below the one that held my feet. I climbed the last few rungs into the tilt jet, and as I did so, a metal plate below me slid out and snapped into place, cutting off the roar of the rushing wind. My ears were ringing, and my face and hands were burning.

I was in a longish, narrow room. Each surface was gunmetal grey, with a door at each end. The winch mechanism for the rope ladder hung from the ceiling, along with several other devices. The floor was smooth, but the walls were covered in irregular protrusions of various description.

Abruptly, the floor tilted upwards, and a series of rapid-fire gunshots rang through the hall. "Brace for breacher!" The sound issued from a small black box mounted on the wall. I grabbed onto a pipe-like wall attachment just as the jet began to rock violently. It lasted for what seemed like forever, but was probably only a few seconds, then subsided.

"And... we are clear." The same voice, much calmer now, said "and thank you for flying with NERV America." As soon as the announcement concluded, the door at the front of the chamber opened. I walked through it, down another passage, through another set of doors, and into the control space of the aircraft.

It was a large triangular room, with seats for at least seven people. The walls were lined with view screens, most of which were showing what I assumed was the view from outside. Others displayed maps, with a wide variety of icons, lines, and shadings of various colors. There were at least six holographic projectors as well, the smallest a cube three feet on an edge. There was more data playing out on these displays, though pretty much all of it was alien to me.

At the point of the triangle opposite to me was a tall chair, its back facing towards me. I heard someone say something, but I couldn't make it out over the sound of my ears ringing. "What?"

"I said, how. Was. The. Pick. up?" The chair turned around, showing me the speaker. He was a young man, maybe ten years older than my sixteen. His hair was close-cropped and tinged an odd, unhealthy-looking yellow-green color. His face was relatively normal looking, aside from the long scar down the right side of his face, as well as the fainter one that disappeared under the left side of his chin.

"I could have been better." I said "if I hadn't had to climb up the ladder into a moving plane with some monstrosity shooting lasers at me."

"Cool." He waved a hand "you're Ethsemondel Stavens, right?"

"Yes."

"Good. This is you, right." He pointed at one of the projector cubes "that's you, right?"

I looked at it. It displayed my face from several angles and rendering styles. My face was slightly handsome, if plain overall, but the wireframe view made me look like a psychopath. It conveyed my short hair accurately, except for the fact that my hair was black, rather than lime green. The funhouse mirror got the color of my eyes right, my eyes being the color of milk chocolate seen in grayscale.

"Um... Yes, that's me"

"Good." The man said, turning around in his chair "sit anywhere. Your stupid questions caused me to overshoot our destination, so we'll be a little longer. Also, no need to be so loud." With that, he unceremoniously, spun the controls, causing the entire plane to tilt sharply to to the left.

Immediately, I lost my footing and fell across the room, hitting a consol. It kinda hurt. I lay there for a few minutes, wondering just what the hell was going on. Up to now, my life had been depressingly typical. The Second Impact had been bad, but what came next was arguably even worse. Sure, I've seen the statistics just like everybody else, and I know the body count was much lower. I know we were lucky that our nation held together at all, for that matter. I took three years to fully restore constitutional order of government.

And in those years I lost my family. It was, I had been told, raiders. I had been lucky to have been taken in by the Stavens. They were a young couple who had both taken severe doses of radiation. They raised me like the child they could never have, and, for a time, I was happy.

However, the radiation they had taken was slowly killing both of them. The doctors claimed it was incurable, but I have heard rumors otherwise. Under the Valentine Treaty, the UN has control of all 'strategically vital' resources, including advanced medical biotics, such as the type that could cure radiation damage.

The one thing I could never figure out, though, was what they were 'strategically vital' _for_.

Since then, I had lived as a ward of the state. Essentially, that meant I received a pass to attend school, and I could collect an allocation of money each month. I got to deal with the little things, like finding food and shelter. It was a strange life, but I had done relatively well.

Until last week. When I went to the office to show my school attendance record in exchange for my not-quite-adequate stipend, I was given a blank cash card, a train ticket from New York-IV to New Phoenix, and a copy of _Starship Troopers_.

Which pretty much brings me to the present. I could have chosen not to go, of course, but that wasn't really an option. I made money on the side of my student stipend, but probably not enough to get me through the month, and not enough to support me long-term.

Thankfully, the ringing in my ears was starting to die down. My hearing had recovered enough that I could hear the man at the controls announce that we approaching our landing. I Stood up and looked at one of the view screens, which showed the tilt jet approaching a skyscraper. After a few seconds, the aircraft landed.

"Any landing you can walk away from, I suppose." The pilot said, climbing out of his chair "by the way, name's Malkus." The door opened as he walked toward the back of the room. He continued through the door, motioning me to follow.

I did. He led me through a different passage than the one I had traveled on my way to the cockpit, and to another door. This one was several inches thick, lined with bars to lock it into the body of the craft.

Malkus jumped down from the door onto the concrete surface of the skyscraper. I followed, walking across the roof. The wind was strong at this height, but that bothered me less that the scents the winds carried. They carried the distinctive odor of gunpowder, diluted, but still discernible. The plains north of the city were pockmarked by what were probably blast craters.

"Don't bother to look" Malkus said "I'm sure it's awful. We call those things out there angels. Don't ask me, I didn't come up with the name. I think its terrible Anyway, we need to move." I felt a lurch "Watch your step."

A double row of blinking red lights appeared in front of me. Looking around, I saw that they continued to form a rectangle which surrounded the tilt jet.

Another lurch.

"Hurry up!" Malkus shouted abruptly "they're dropping the elevator!" With that, he sprinted across the double line of blinking lights.

"Wait, what?" The ground began to drop. I realized the purpose of the double line of lights: they showed the boundary of the elevator. I sprinted to the edge and hopped over the boundary while it was no taller than a high step.

"So, where are we going?" I asked as we walked across the roof. Malkus reached into his pocket and withdrew something. I couldn't see what it was, but a second later, a several sections of the roof dropped, forming a staircase.

We Malkus walked down the staircase, and I followed. "We're going to central command." He said "It seems like I got you here more or less in one piece."

The bottom of the staircase was a platform, a few feet on a side. It was made of a different material than the steps, some kind of metal. As I stepped onto it, the slabs that formed the stairs silently began to elevate. The last one reached position, plunging us into darkness. For a moment, nothing happened. Then four blue lights in the floor activated, one at each corner of the platform. A second later, the floor dropped away.

I was _almost_ falling through darkness. As I would later learn, when set to emergency speed, this elevator accelerated at about thirty feet per second. I felt practically weightless. For all intents and purposes, I was.

After we fell for a few seconds, the walls changed from concrete to a metal of the same type as the floor of the elevator. It continued like this for a brief, and then the walls disappeared. If the cavernous chamber the elevator was plunging through had any walls, the light was too weak to reveal it. _Wait a sec... What's supporting this platform?_

I froze. After a little bit more falling, I began to feel heavy. I realized the elevator was decelerating. Still moving at an insane speed, the walls reappeared. I let out a breath I had been holding. The elevator slowed to a stop. Doors opened in front of me. Malkus walked out. I followed.

I found myself in a long hallway, walls, floor and ceiling made of dull grey metal, which extended to the left and right before me. Malkus began to walk to the right, and I followed. Without turning around, he began to speak.

"As I told you, New Phoenix is being attacked by creatures called angels. The how and why are neither completely clear nor presently important. What is important is that they would kill us all if they could, and are more than able to do so, should they be given the chance. What's more, most conventional weapons are completely ineffective against them. We have one system that can combat them, and that's where you come in."

"Me?" I said, always first to ask critical, intelligent questions "um... why?"

"Because of reasons" Malkus said "anyway, we're here." He turned to face a large, heavy set of double doors. They were embossed with a large logo showing half of a leaf, with the letters NE and RV under it. Beneath that, two short words were displayed one on each door.

FIAT LUX

One the lintel, the door declared the room 'Zero Hour'. Silently, the doors opened, revealing another cavernous space. The high ceiling, floor, and distant walls were all polished to an immaculate finish. Several tall columns of the same material reached up to the ceiling. A knot of people stood in the center of the room, around one of the columns. Wordlessly, Malkus began to run toward them.

I could have been in better shape, and I was slightly out of breath when we reached the group. There were several people in lab coats, a few in clean suits, and a couple in tac vests. They were, however, at least in my mind, all insignificant compared to the main attraction.

It was a robotic giant, standing perhaps twice my height. It was covered in shiny black armor plates, with brilliant silver highlights. It had broad shoulders, from which two pylons extended a foot or two above its pauldrons. It was pretty much human-proportioned, with the exception of its open chest.

Its shoulders were leaned back, and its pecs flared open like wings, and the top half of its chest opened and spread, like a man with his ribs spread.

One of the men in a well-decorated military uniform turned to me. "Ethsemondel? Good! You're here. I am commander Raphael, NERV America. Our city is under attack, and unit-07, this beauty here, is the only prayer we have of holding the line." He looked up, and took a deep breath.

"We need you to pilot it."

"Ok, looks cool." I said "I'll give it a shot."

He raised an eyebrow "that easily?"

I walked toward the machine and placed a hand on its leg "you wouldn't have made all this effort to bring me here if you didn't have a trump card, and I like this sorta thing."

Commander Raphael said nothing for a moment, then clapped his hand twice. "MOVE IT, PEOPLE! WE HAVE AN OPERATOR. I WANTED TO HAVE LAUNCHED FIVE MINUTES AGO!" He turned to me "the basic operation is pretty simple, if you can synchronize with the neural controls."

The area was engulfed in a frenzy of activity. Someone in a lab coat, I don't know who, lead me in front of the machine Raphael had referred to as Unit-07. Someone had placed a stepladder next to it, and the person in the lab coat told me to climb up.

At the top of the ladder, I saw the cavity where I would control the machine. With continuous verbal instruction, I climbed backwards into the control area, placing my legs in the wells provided. In the end result of which was me sort of leaning back, supported by the robot. As I fidgeted to get comfortable, a plate rose up and covered me to neck height. I felt a pressure on my chest.

"Now, reach into the arm slots and grasp the control bars." I couldn't say where Commander Raphael's voice came from, but I followed his instructions, and found two cold metallic bars.

As my fingers closed on the control rods, the pectoral plates slid over my chest, and the headpiece lowered, plunging me into darkness. A moment later, I fell into a sensory void.

Nothing. I felt nothing. I didn't see blackness; that would have been registering lack of light. I felt nothing. I took a breath, but there was no air. I began to panic, flailing wildly against nothing at all.

"Let's MOVE!" Commander Raphael shouted at the franticly mobilizing group "CIC team with me!" Without actually waiting to see who followed, Commander Raphael turned and actually began to run out of the launch room, however indigent it may have been for a man of his rank in full uniform.

As he ran, he pulled a communicator from his pocket. "Status?"

"UN forces are collapsing on the center and east flank, and west is faltering." His lieutenant, the man giving him the reports, was an able commander, and he trusted his view of the situation.

"Is it time to deploy?"

"With all due respect, commander, we really should have deployed as soon as we saw these things."

"Well" Raphael almost shouted "can we?"

"I" the lieutenant said nothing for a moment, then replied "you have permission to power up CIC."

"Good. Phoenix actual out."

The UN regulations, under the thrice-damned Valentine Treaty, required the base to maintain certain 'peacetime' regulations, one of the most annoying of which required him to keep his Combat Information Center, or CIC powered down when not in use. All sorts of platitudes were given as to why, but the real reason was quite clear.

After about three minutes, he arrived at the CIC. A least half the staff had already filled in and begun activating their stations. "Status?"

"Multiple Absolute Territory Fields detected" Sensors shouted "and...blueshift pattern confirmed. Designating as Hostiles one through four!"

"Remaining friendly forces plotted now!"

"Gaining telemetry from Unit-07!" Communications shouted "Sync rate holding at... 42.6%, all readings nominal."

"All right" Raphael took a deep breath "Go or No Go on EVA launch."

"Telemetry is Go."

"Armaments is Go."

"Energy Systems is Go."

"Locomotion is Go."

"Absolute Territory is Go."

Raphael lowered his head for a moment as the various CIC stations chimed in. Then, he raised his head and spoke. "All systems are Go. Prepare for EVA launch on my mark."

After an eternal, terrible instant in the void, a wave of pinpricks rolled over my skin, and sensation returned. In a series of hammer blows, sensory information began to reach my brain once more.

I opened my eyes. I was in the room with the columns, but this time I felt... taller. I looked down at my arm, and saw an appendage covered in segmented overlapping black armor, highlighted in silver. The same was true for the rest of my body. I felt weighty, but more than enough strength surged through me to render it meaningless. My head saw in a sea of figures and readouts. Most of them were pretty much indecipherable, but I could make out a few, such as the operational time clock, currently frozen at 0:30:00:00 and the body damage readout.

I felt myself sliding back into one of the columns. An instant after I stopped, a large slab clashed down and plunged me into darkness again. I felt something grab onto my shoulder pylons. A second later, I began accelerating upwards. I had no idea how fast it was, but it didn't seem to bother me that much.

I slammed to a stop. The slab in front of me dropped forward, not unlike the front of an amphibious assault boat. A series of explosive bolts detonated, freeing my suit. I rocked slightly, but I steadied myself and took two steps forward. I was on a ubiquitous New Phoenix street. To be entirely honest, I wasn't really sure where I was.

My suit coms crackled, and a small box containing video feed of Commander Raphael's face appeared in my peripheral vision. "Alright, Eth, you should have a pretty good idea of the objectives. Your mission is to advance to contact with the enemy, and engage in a holding action until we can get some more suits operational. For this mission, we've equipped your unit with a M32 combat rifle, X5 grenade launcher, and a progressive combat knife. Once you launch, you should be seeing guidance to the target area on your visual displays, as well as leads to umbilical power stations. Without the cord, you have thirty minutes of internal power, which should be fine, but play it safe. Phoenix actual out." The image of Commander Raphael vanished.

I looked at the mess of displays in front of me, then chose one and began to run. The suit was _fast_. It was like flying, until I ran into a building. Ouch.

Chiding myself, I took a few steps back, shook my head, and began to run. I looked back for a moment, and saw a long, thin cable trailing out behind me, leading to a point on my upper back. I reached back at touched it, confirming I could reach it.

Next, I reached over my shoulder to one of the pylon there. It reacted instantly, protruding a combat rifle and pushing the grip into my hands. I stopped, bringing the weapon in front of me. It was very large, but other than that, looked pretty much like any other assault rifle. I fired a few practice shots at some nearby public art. Satisfied that I had both been issued a quality combat weapon and done my duty to improve the cities aesthetics, I returned the rifle to my shoulder pylon.

In the suit, my hearing was as least as good as it was normally, and I heard the sounds of combat. Handheld weapons, artillery fire, explosions, and other, more bestial sounds. Attempting to suppress my self-preservation instinct, I made directly for the gunshots.

I had been running for a few minutes when I saw my first angel again. It was the same one that had attacked me before Malkus had picked me up, and it was still just as ugly. It was facing away from me, in the process of doing... something. As I approached, it turned around to face me. Its eyes lined up with my primary visual sensors. I got the distinct impression it recognized me.

I reached over my shoulder and withdrew my assault rifle. I leveled it at the angel and held down the trigger, unleashing a devastating storm of steel and tungsten penetrators at the angel as it charge at me with terrifying and surprising speed.

Which did absolutely nothing.

Commander Raphael's image appeared in my peripheral vision in the same spot as it had the last time. "Eth, its AT field provides it with a near-perfect defence. You need to spread your field to neutralize it's. I can't help you with that."

The angel reached me, and backhanded me with its oversized right arm. It hit hard, even harder than I would have expected. And it _hurt_. Impact alarms and damage alerts appeared as I struck the wall of a building. I wanted to curl up into a ball and lie there. The pain was receding faster than I would have expected, but compared to the fear, it was practically meaningless. I had felt so strong in the suit, and become confident. _What was I thinking? Did I really get so caught up in all this, in wanting to make a difference, that I let myself not realize what a tremendously _stupid_ idea this was?_

I shivered as the angel drew closer. My mind flashed to something I had read once, a story of a boy thrown into a series of situations beyond his frame of reference. _I must not fear_. I began to straighten my back, shrugging off a few chunks of concrete that dropped on me.

_Fear is the mind-killer_. I shook the remaining debris off of myself and stepped forward.

_Fear is the little-death that brings total annihilation._ I reached into a well of power in the suit I hadn't know existed, and threw it into the world around me, demanding it shape itself to my will.

_I will face my fear_. I had dropped my rifle, so I reached to my pylon which remained full and drew my grenade launcher.

_I will permit it to pass over me and through me._ I threw my field forward, slamming it into the angel's. The two resonated for a moment, then the field around the angel collapsed.

_And when it has gone past I will turn the inner eye to see its path_. I leveled the grenade launcher and held down the trigger. This time, the angel had no protection.

_Where the fear has gone, there will be nothing_. The grenades detonated on a mixture of proximity and impact. The first two detonated around the angel, the shrapnel tearing its flesh, reddish blood, filling the air. The third struck its leg, exploded, and annihilated it. The fourth took off its head. The fifth round struck it in the red gem on its chest. The angel convulsed as the explosion shattered the gem, which glowed incredibly bright for a moment. I braced myself for the abominations death throes, but nothing happened, and the sixth round was unnecessary.

_Only I will remain_.

That seems like a good place to leave it. This is my first story, so thanks for reading. I'm working on chapter 2 now, and should be able to update soon. As always, please leave a review after the beep.


	2. Chapter B

I rounded the corner, looking everywhere. Of particular note was my operational clock. I had lost my umbilical a few blocks back, and my clock currently read at 25:31:78. With half an hour of internal power, the suit was capable of extended operations, but the umbilical also contained several other important things, such as my hardwire connection to HQ.

I started advancing down the street, assault rifle out. I had recovered it, only slightly damaged, after killing my first angel, and some more public art had demonstrated _clearly_ that it was still perfectly serviceable.

As I advanced down the street, a lone humanoid figure stepped out from behind a pile of rubble that had apparently been blasted off one of the nearby buildings by an errant missile strike. I couldn't make out details through the dust, but the figure was human-sized and proportioned, and my first thought was that it _was_ a person, who had somehow not made it to one of the shelters. I held my assault rifle in my left hand and lowered it, holding out my right arm and hand.

The figure began to walk toward me, mirroring my gesture as it did so. I couldn't make out any distinguishing marks on the figure, which was starting to disturb me. The figure's arm stopped just above parallel with the ground.

My first warning something was wrong was the massive, intense, pain that ripped through my right side as I staggered back, warning lights and damage alarms flashing across my view.

I screamed silently in my suit as I spread my field and charged forward. As I threw my field outward toward the angel, I raised my rifle and emptied the magazine at it. Of course, having no real idea how to actually _use_ a fully automatic weapon, I probably only managed to hit the thing once or twice. As I continued to charge forward, I returned my assault rifle to its pylon and drew my knife. As I saw the edge of the knife blur beyond visibility, I felt some confidence return to me.

Then the angel held out its arm. Bone ridges formed, and began to slide, almost _flow_, into and then past its hand, forming what looked like some type of double scimitar in its hand. Of course. As I closed through the dust, I got my first good look at my opponent. It was humanoid in size and form, other than that blade, but otherwise looked like a simple manikin. It was colored a dull grey, and its skin was unnaturally blank and smooth. Its face was flat, devoid of all facial features save a pair of eyes glowing a bright, glacial blue.

It took three quick steps forward and swung its blade at my left kidney. I flinched, and the blade hit at an angle, bouncing off my armor in a shower of sparks. I couched, and stabbed underhand. The angel simply accepted the attack and, without even flinching at the blade lodged its chest, cut at my right shoulder. Sparks flew from the impact, and a few damage alerts appeared.

Recovering, I pulled my knife back and struck at the angel's neck. It dropped to one knee as I swung, causing me to miss by several inches. From the ground, the angel struck at both of my calves in quick succession, but was met with little success as I brought my progressive knife down on its head.

The angle rolled backwards like an acrobat and stood out, just as _another _angel, which looked almost exactly like the one I had killed earlier, appeared. It tilted its chest down at me, and then it roared. I couldn't identify the source of the sound, and it was almost painfully loud, even though the suit filters.

I began to walk backwards as I returned my knife to its holder-thing on my waist and drew my grenade launcher. _I _know_ I don't want to be in knife fighting range of this thing_.

As the angel began to walk forward, I began to fire grenades at it, stepping back as I did so. My grenades detonated on and around the angel, but none of them seemed to damage its core. The first sign I had that something else was wrong was when something picked me up by the head and threw me.

Without the suit, I was pretty sure I would have died. With it, it just hurt. A lot.

I flew a short distance, hit a wall, and slid down to the ground. My eyes flickered as damage alarms appeared, briefly obstructing my view. When my vision returned, I saw the thing that had thrown me. It was a tall, spindly thing, with several insectile legs reaching down from a large, cockroach-like body, with at least six more arms, extending out from the front part of its body. A large red orb was lodged in its body behind where the arms connected.

I tried to stand, but several spots on the legs of my damage readout blinked red, and I fell before rising more than a few inches. The thing took a step towards me, but the manikin angel walked out from behind its legs, looking intently at the blade on its hands. It stopped a few feet in front of me, and the blade began to flow and shift again. One side of the double blade withered away, and the other end straitened, growing a few inches and assuming a vaguely conical shape.

The angel stepped forward, and, with ado, plunged the blade into my chest.

It hurt. A lot. Seriously.

The angel held the blade motionless for a few seconds, and then tore it out of me. Seeing the weapon, covered in my own blood, held in front of me was somewhat disturbing. Detached, I absently reached behind me with my left hand and ran it over my back. I brought it back in front of me, turning it and inspecting the blood on the black gauntlet.

_I... I'm going to die_. I thought, looking down at the hole in my chest. It was on the right side of my chest, level with my heart. Had it been on the other side, I would probably already be dead.

The angel was cradling the blade in its arms, stepping around slowly and randomly. The insectoid angel walked forward, and slowly raised its arms. Each was tipped with a vicious spike.

_If... if I'm going to die_ I thought, resolve filling me _I may as well go spitting in their eye_. As the angel approached, I gathered my field, preparing myself for one last effort. The angel raised its arms, preparing to strike. I threw my field forward. The two resonated, then shattered.

Just as a hail of bullets slammed into the insectile angel. I looked down the street and saw red-and-gold suit, larger and bulkier than mine, approaching slowly down the street, feet accompanied by a cascade of brass from the minigun in its hands.

Orange tracers streaked past, though, and into the angel. If every fifth round was a tracer, then the suit was firing... a hell of a lot of bullets.

Almost immediately, the insectile angel lost a leg and two arms. Holding my concentration on canceling out the field of the insect angel, I reached over my shoulder and drew my assault rifle. As I did so, a tall, lithe, blue-and-grey suit came charging down the street, barreling toward the cloaking angel. As it approached, I sensed a pair of field coalesce, then collide. A plain of concentric hexagons appeared between them, then vanished.

I raised my weapons, one in each hand, and opened fire. It was not a very accurate way to shoot, and I hit mostly air. However, I knew enough about firearms to know that the danger with automatic weapons was the barrel rising, so I endeavored to hold it down, and put most of my shots at least in the right neighborhood. The blue suit closed low, slashing at the angel's legs.

As the hail of bullets tore through the angel in front of me, it began to fall. The fire stopped for a moment, then a white suit with red highlights dropped out of the sky, holding two long blades. It struck the angel and both went to the ground, blades flashing. They struggled for a moment, then the flashed white and exploded. As it did so, I saw the blue suit drive a progressive knife into the core of the other angel. It died much less dramatically; it just melted into a puddle of red something.

When the dust cleared, the white suit stood up out of the new crater in the street, strangely untarnished._ Too late_ I thought _too late for me, anyway._ There was a large puddle of blood forming on the concrete under where my suit had fallen. _I never quite realized I could bleed so much and... remain... conscious_. The white suit approached me, and held out a hand. A com window appeared in my view, showing a serious-faced young man, who bore an odd resemblance to Commander Raphael.

"I'm Augustus" he said, eyes boring into me "I'm sorry it took so long for my team to get here. This is probably gonna suck, but now that you're with us, you'll _never_ be alone."

I'm opened my mouth to deliver a witty response, but at that point, the blood loss caught up with me. I blacked out.

I woke up in a room that smelled like a hospital. I looked at my hand. Normal, pale skin. No obsidian-colored armor, and oddly, no blood.

"Well" I said, to no one in particular "looks like I'm alive."

"Yes" came the response "it looks like you are." The speaker had a soft, female voice, and it was coming from to the right of and behind my hospital bed. A girl with long, white hair walked into my field of view.

"I'm" she paused, then looked up "actually, you don't need to know what my name is. Call me Sel." She adjusted her hair "I was in the red suit out there. You know, the red one? With gold trim? Its Unit-05." She began to walk toward the door. "You've been out for about a day, and the doctor cleared you to return to active service. You've got some clothes on the table. Change. The Commander wants to meet with you."

I began to climb out of bed, strangely, despite my inquiries, I didn't feel any particular difficulty in doing so. At that point, I remembered something rather disturbing.

"Wait a sec!" I shouted "what about the huge hole in my chest?"

"What" Sel said, looking upwards "are you talking about?"

"You know, the humanoid angel. The one that looked like a manikin, with the two scythe-things, and the needle-thing, and the glowing blue eyes."

Sel sighed. "I... I have no idea what you are talking about. Not get changed. I was serious about the Commander wanting to see you."

I began to climb out of bed. "Wait a second, aren't you going to wait out in the hall or something?"

"Oh, right. That." Sel rolled her eyes, then walked out of the room.

Once I was sure she was gone, I got out of the hospital bed and found the clothes Sel had mentioned on the nightstand. There was a tee-shirt a pair of jeans, nothing really unusual. As I took off my shirt, I looked at the right side of my chest, even with my heart, where I was still _convinced_ I had been stabbed.

Something had happened there, that was for sure. There was a badly bruised patch of skin in an uneven ring around another patch, this one circular and pinkish. _Huh_ I thought, prodding it _it's somewhat sore, but not what I would expect. I wonder_...

I was cut off in my musings by a series of loud raps on the door.

I finished changing as quickly as I could, and then exited the room. Sel led me through the hallways, which I noticed seemed awfully large for the amount of traffic in them. As we entered one of the stairwells, I noted the door. It was very thick, about six inches, or so. We climbed up a few flights of stairs, walked a while, and eventually arrived at Commander Raphael's office.

The office was an odd place. Overall, it was relatively Spartan. The walls were unadorned, with no "I love me" wall, and the desk was plain, just a large monitor, mouse, and keyboard. It did, however, appear to be made of solid mahogany. Behind the desk, Raphael reclined in his chair.

"So, Ethsemondel" he began "can I call you Eth?"

"Sure" I said "I-"

The Commander waved his hand. "For starters, thanks for taking the suit out there. You did a good job, especially for your first time in an EVA suit. So, can we count on you fighting Unit-07 in future engagements?"

"Um... how far in the future? How many engagements? What's my chance of dying? What's my-"

"No idea how many fights, or how long." Commander Raphael said looking me in the eye "and you saw how bad you were after this one. So, from a personal point of view, you would be _stupid_ to sign up." He took a deep breath "but I'd say that the stakes make up for all of that. We are at war. Not over land, resources, or power. We are fighting for the survival of the human race."

Raphael grimaced "and yes, I know _exactly_ how clichéd that sounds. But at this point, you have a choice." He reached under his desk, and picked up a small box. He opened it, revealing two pills; one red, and one blue.

"This is your last chance. After this, there is no turning back. You take the blue pill - the story ends, you wake up in your bed and believe whatever you want to believe. You take the red pill - you stay in Wonderland, and I show you how deep the rabbit hole goes." He smiled "so..," he spread his hands "chose."

At that point, Sel, who had been snickering quietly doubled over laughing. "C-C-Commander, I'm... pretty sure that violates at least one copyright. And-"

"Shut up, Sel" Commander Raphael snapped "you're ruining the homage ." He continued, snapping back to his oddly serene voice "chose."

I reached out, slowly, toward the pill box, extending two fingers. Then the Commander shut the box and pulled it away. "Sorry" he said "couldn't really help myself there. I need those pills for the next pilot, anyway. So, will you drive the robot?"

"That... depends." I said slowly "how much do you pay?"

"Wait...you're asking about the _pay_?" the Commander raised an eyebrow. "For whatever reason, no one ever-"

"I'll do it for twenty five hundred a week, tax exempt, adjusted for inflation, with combat and hazard pay."

Commander Raphael relaxed. "Oh, ok. Deal. We cover your medical, dental, housing, and anything else you would expect a high school student with no parents in a fictional work centered on combat to need anyway, so you should be good."

"Now wait a sec!" Sel said, slamming her hands down on Commander Raphael's desk "nobody ever asked me if-"

"Well, look at the time! Eth, thanks for agreeing to drive the robot. It's been great talking to you both, but I have an appointment with Malkus in a few minutes, and I need time to prepare. Have a nice day."

Sel and I quickly egressed from the room. Waiting outside was the boy who had contacted me at the end of the battle in the city. He had brown hair, bright blue eyes, and a hard, planar face. "Hello, Ethsemondel Stavens. I apologize for my father. He is somewhat eccentric and under... extensive pressure." He took my hand and shook it firmly. "Anyway, my dad purchased a large penthouse apartment for us suit troopers to use. Now that we've finally been sortied in combat, we can actually move in."

"Wonderful" Sel said, as we began to walk down the hallway toward the nearest stairwell and/or bank of elevators. "So this bastard" she elbowed me "actually managed to get the old man to agree to pay him."

"Nice work" Augustus said "also, thanks for sticking your neck out in the battle yesterday. If you hadn't people could have died before we could have killed all the angels, and we might not have gotten all of them at all. So, what did you think of Unit-04 my suit? It was the first one that we made that's up to combat quality, but also the best in my humble opinion."

"Well" I said "let's see. Somehow you managed to jump off a building, and then wrestle an angel till it _exploded_. So it was pretty good, I suppose."

"Thanks." He said, as we rounded a corner to the elevator bank. Sel pressed the call button

"Unit-07 is your suit, right? It was no slouch out there. Neither were you, for that matter."

Malkus walked into the Commander's office, the door cycling shut behind him. "So, after-action report?"

The commander shook his head "no, sorry. Unfortunately, I've got another mission for you." Raphael passed Malkus a sheet of paper. As Malkus scanned the page, he did a double take.

"Are... are these guys for real?" Malkus said slamming the paper onto the desk and jabbing a finger at it "I... I can't believe this. The evacuation _worked_! No one should have died! And then they bomb a shelter? I'll get a squad and _eradicate_ these bastards."

Malkus paused for a moment and turned back to Commander Raphael "that _is_ what you want, right?"

Raphael nodded. "I would prefer if you could bring at least a few of them back for questioning."

The elevator was, conveniently, able to take us almost directly to the lobby of my new building.

"The buildings, or at least the really big ones, retract into the same cavern as HQ" Augustus explained, making a sort of spherical gesture "and the elevator can take us all the way up to the mechanisms for moving the building."

At this point, I was still a bit lost. "Moving buildings? What the hell did _that_ cost?"

"You aren't scared of heights" Sel injected "are you?"

"Not particularly" I said "although after what Malkus put me through when he was picking me up, I'm thinking about reconsidering."

"Good" Sel said.

At that moment, the walls of the elevator, which I now realized were made of glass, cleared what I later learned was a protective sleeve. I looked down on a sea of lights.

Below us, the shape of HQ stretched out in a long, tapered rectangle. They were surrounded by additional lines, which radiated out in a rough wagon wheel pattern, each leading to another distant cluster of lights.

"HQ alone is over a mile long." Augustus said, an odd note of pride in his voice. "Each of those lines is a road leading to one of the support facilities." He pointed "over there is power. We run this place off fusion, as well as providing the city above with a large portion of its power."

He rotated, pointing at three more spots. "Each of those is a mine. We get quite a lot of metals down here, especially platinum groups and rare earths, in bizarrely high concentrations. The other three clusters are defensive batteries. In the event an angel gets down here, we installed the heaviest weapons we could find to have a hope of fending it off. After today, though..."

Augustus trailed off. I had heard the barrage of fire directed at the invading angles, and seen firsthand how little it damaged them. Still, with big enough guns...

"So any, Augustus, Sel, what are the Eva suits, anyway?"

"Basically" Augustus said, taking a deep breath "each suit is, in essence, a powered exoskeleton. It is equipped with integrated sensors, communications, and other equipment. It has hard points where weapons can be affixed directly to the suit, as well as the capability to use appropriately-scaled 'man-portable' weapons. It also-"

"You're missing the good part." Sel interjected "the central feature is the symbiont. Each suit contains an organism hardwired into the suit, which also bonds to the occupant. It provides pain suppression and medical support, as well as providing a large portion of the unit's physical capability. Most importantly, it also projects an AT, or Absolute Territory, field, which is why it can actually fight the angels."

I shuddered. "Um... bonds to the occupant, how, exactly?"

Augustus rolled his eyes. "She's overstating it. For the most part, it's just a neural link."

"Thank goodness I wasn't planning on eating tonight."

NEXT TIME ON NEO TACTICAL EVANGELION!

Ethsemondel: You can't scare me with this Gestapo crap. I know my rights; I want a phone call.

Malkus: Tell me, Mr. Stavens, what good is a phone call... if you are unable to speak?

Ethsemondel: ...

Raphael: Do not try to bend the sword; that's impossible. Instead, only try to realize the truth.

Ethsemondel: What truth?

Raphael: There is no sword.

Ethsemondel: There is no sword?

Raphael: Then you will see that it is not the sword that bends, but yourself.

Malkus: What do you need, other than a miracle?

Ethsemondel: Guns. Lots of Guns.

Sel: Eth, no one has ever been stupid enough to do anything like this before.

Ethsemondel: That's why it's going to work.


End file.
